ABSTRACT
Grounded in Orientalism and neo-Orientalism frameworks, this chapter dissects the pathways by which Western narratives shape the stories of athletes from Afghanistan and Pakistan, often persistently oscillating between adversity and achievement. Three case studies of athletes expose longstanding Orientalist tropes, contemporary Islamophobia, and color-blind post-racial rhetoric that coexist in Western discourse, especially after right-wing politics have become popular across the globe. First, Azeem Rafiq’s whistleblowing traces a shift from moral testimony to institutional crisis. Second, British coverage of the 2010 spot-fixing scandal of three Pakistani cricketers illustrates how individual wrongdoing is stretched into civilizational indictment. Third, debates over Afghanistan’s men’s team highlight proxy penalties imposed on teams and athletes over state policies that players cannot influence. The chapter concludes with an inductive framework called Orientalist Proxy Gatekeeping Theory (OPGT), which explains how a media-institution loop translates harm into risk management, the individual into the civilization, and state politics into squad or individual-level sanctioning.
